Remember Shakti

Monday 16 July 2001 19.00 EDT
First published on Monday 16 July 2001 19.00 EDT

The Indo-jazz group Shakti are now held in such awe that they could probably get away with leaving their eclectic instrumentation on a spotlit mat for a couple of hours and just turn up for the encores. Since they reconvened in 1997 after a two-decade gap, Shakti have shown that their improvising instincts are still sharp. Sunday's performance was their most varied, expressive and thrilling London gig since their comeback; an ensemble triumph that included virtuoso displays sometimes difficult to credit to mortal beings.

The re-formed Shakti have continued to revolve around a core of John McLaughlin on guitars and Zakir Hussain on tablas. They have been joined by original percussionist Vikku Vinayakram's son V Selvaganesh, while electric-mandolin player U Shrinivas has replaced violinist L Shankar. The show expanded this lineup with the addition of an alternately haunting and exultant microtonal singer, Shankar Mahadevan, slide guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya, and additional percussionist Bhavani Shankar.

One fascinating aspect of Shakti's evolution is the submersion of McLaughlin's speed-of-light technique into the ensemble's needs. Though his virtuosity surfaces in shooting-star blurs, his contribution is more often about chordal texture, background drama and the subtle reconnection of eastern rhythmic and melodic concepts to hints of R&B, flamenco and jazz. The change in McLaughlin is a significant reason that Shakti have taken on a new life.

The show's many absorbing episodes often featured the percussionists - appropriately, since the event was one of the first gigs in the South Bank's Rhythm Sticks festival. A slow guitar riff took on an eastern slurred-intervals ambiguity with Shrivinas's birdsong mandolin solo. Initially meditative traditional songs for Mahadevan turned into wild, wheeling, melodically breathtaking vocal improvisations like Indian bebop. And Hussain's tabla breaks conjured up bare feet running, galloping hooves, the clatter of traffic. Mahadevan's voice interweaving with the painterly boldness of the bottleneck guitar had a resonance both tremulous and sinister. But Selvaganesh's breathtaking hand- drumming on the tambourine-like kanjira, with its overlays of treble clatter and deep, bass drum-mimicking sounds, and his wayward enthusiasm for splicing several grooves into one solo, was a tour de force.